Other editions of book The Secret Agent: By Joseph Conrad - Illustrated

The Secret Agent was one of the first espionage novels ever written, and it is certainly one of the finest in the oeuvre of Joseph Conrad. The story concerns the attempt by a group of back-alley revolutionaries to destroy one of London's most famous landmarks and thereby set off a revolution. As the plot unfolds, we discover a cast of unlikely villains, self-aggrandizing intellectuals, overeager bureaucrats, fame hungry politicians, and innocent bystanders, all described with poignant psychological depth as only Conrad could. The story centers around Adolph Verloc, owner of a Soho bookshop and ostensibly a member of a group of home-grown anarchists, but actually in the pay of a foreign government. Verloc's quiescent wife, Winnie, maintains their stable household in which she tries to provide for her retarded brother and her aging mother under the thinly disguised irritability of her husband. The anarchist collective consists of "Doctor" Ossipan, who lives off his romantic attachments to women barely able to take care of themselves; "The Professor", an explosives expert who is so insecure that he is perpetually wired with a detonator in case he is threatened by police capture; and Michaelis, a corpulent writer composing an autobiography after a mitigated sentence in prison. This production includes a brilliant introduction by Thomas Korzeniowski, a distant relative of Conrad (whose real Polish name was Josef Konrad Korzeniowski). It is not only a fitting tribute to his renowned predecessor, but a very insightful look into the man and his work.

With an Introduction and Notes by Hugh Epstein, Secretary of the Joseph Conrad Society of Great Britain 'Then the vision of an enormous town prented itself, of a monstrous town...a cruel devourer of the world's light. There was room enough there to place any story, depth enough for any passion, variety enough there for any setting, darkness enough to bury five millions of lives.' Conrad's 'monstrous town' is London, and his story of espionage and counter-espionage, anarchists and embassies, is a detective story that becomes the story of Winnie Verloc's tenacity in maintaining her devotion to her peculiar and simple-minded brother, Stevie, as they pursue their very ordinary lives above a rather dubious shop in the back streets of Soho.

The story is set in London in 1886 and deals largely with the life of Mr. Verloc and his job as a spy. The Secret Agent is notable as one of Conrad's later political novels, which move away from his typical tales of seafaring. The novel deals broadly with the notions of anarchism, espionage, and terrorism and depicts the type of anarchist and revolutionary groups which sprouted up before many of the social uprisings of the early twentieth century.

Inspired by an attempt in 1894 to blow up London’s Greenwich Observatory, The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed original of the long tradition of espionage thrillers that explore the confused motives at the heart of terrorism. Published in 1907, Joseph Conrad’s novel was remarkably prescient, anticipating the political contours of the next century, as well as the classic spy novels of such later writers as Graham Greene and John Le Carré. Conrad’s double agent, Verloc, is a Russian spy tasked with infiltrating an anarchist group in London. His mission to discredit the ineffectual radicals and their cause goes awry, and involves his unsuspecting wife and her vulnerable younger brother in disastrous ways. In its use of powerful psychological insight to intensify narrative suspense, The Secret Agent broke new literary ground. Conrad was the first novelist to discover the strange, in-between territory of the political exile, and his genius was such that we still have no truer map of that region’s moral terrain than his story of a terrorist plot and its tragic consequences for both the guilty and the innocent.Introduction by Paul Theroux(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed).

This chillingly prophetic examination of terrorism by the author of Heart of Darkness is the literary precursor to the espionage thrillers of Graham Greene and John Le Carré. Inspired by an actual attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, The Secret Agent portrays the world of late-nineteenth-century London, with its fatuous civil servants, corrupt police, and squalid underworld characters like Verloc, a pornographer acting as a government informant. Verloc’s assignment is to provoke the radicals whose group he has penetrated into committing an act of such violence that they will be discredited and their appeal to the masses destroyed. With its questionable characters and amoral caricatures, the novel is as much a black satire of English society as a frightening mirror of the present day. With an Introduction by E. L. Doctorow and a New Afterword by Debra Romanick Baldwin

The book tells the story of Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy against Britain. Verloc is a businessman who owns a shop which sells pornographic material, contraceptives and bric-a-brac. His friends are a group of anarchists of which Comrade Ossipon, Michaelis, and "The Professor" are the most prominent. The group produces anarchist literature in the form of pamphlets entitled F.P. – The Future of the Proletariat. Although a member of an anarchist cell, Verloc is also secretly employed by the embassy of a foreign country, but Mr. Vladimir, the new First Secretary in the Embassy is not satisfied with Verloc's contribution. In order to redeem himself, Verloc must carry out an operation – the destruction of Greenwich Observatory by a bomb.

How is this book unique? Free AudiobookIllustrations includedUnabridgedThe Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1907. The story is set in London in 1886 and deals with Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy for an unnamed country (presumably Russia). The Secret Agent is notable for being one of Conrad's later political novels in which he moved away from his former tales of seafaring. The novel deals broadly with anarchism, espionage and terrorism. It also deals with exploitation of the vulnerable, particularly in Verloc's relationship with his brother-in-law Stevie, who has an intellectual disability. The Secret Agent was ranked the 46th best novel of the 20th century by Modern Library. Because of its terrorism theme, it was noted as "one of the three works of literature most cited in the American media" two weeks after the September 11 attacks.

Set in London in 1886, the novel follows the life of Adolf Verloc, a secret agent. Verloc is also a businessman who owns a shop which sells pornographic material, contraceptives and bric-a-brac. He lives with his wife Winnie, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law, Stevie. Stevie has a mental disability, possibly autism, which causes him to be excitable; his sister, Verloc’s wife, attends to him, treating him more as a son than as a brother. Verloc’s friends are a group of anarchists of which Comrade Ossipon, Michaelis, and “The Professor” are the most prominent. Although largely ineffectual as terrorists, their actions are known to the police. The group produces anarchist literature in the form of pamphlets entitled F.P., an acronym for The Future of the Proletariat.Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew, among other things, on his native Poland’s national experiences and on his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly explore the human psyche.